


The Advent Calendar

by Silverblazehorse



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Case Fic, Christmas, Gen, Humor, Humour, Mind Palace, Mystery, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Suspense, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5573968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverblazehorse/pseuds/Silverblazehorse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s December. A stranger sends Sherlock an advent calendar. Its meaning  becomes abruptly apparent when he is asked to solve a very strange murder case: five chocolates are clues, the sixt means murder, then the pattern repeats itself. In six days, the killer will strike again, and it’s up to Sherlock to work out what the clues mean. However, while the clock is ticking, Sherlock is faced with an inner demon that robs him of his greatest power.  Can he stop the massacre that is promised at Christmas Eve?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yitzock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yitzock/gifts).



> This story was written for the BBC Sherlock forum Secret Santa fic exchange, for Yitzock.  
> Her prompt was: Some humour and Christmas festivities, s strange case that involves travelling outside London, Will they solve the case by Christmas? Mary and Mrs Hudson help with the case in some way.
> 
> Also, many thanks to my beta readers Dioscureantwins and Besleybeans, who went through my lengthy story twice with their magnifying glasses and combs and harvested a heap of typos, awkward sentences, editing glitches and general language abuse. Thank you so much!
> 
> And thank you Jolie_Black for your additional church-picking. That was super kind of you.

Sherlock could recognise the footsteps that were coming up the stairs of 221B out of a million. It was John. Sherlock smiled. He had a fair idea how John would react to the elements of his new case that were spread out on the table. He took an old slide, put it under his microscope and pretended to be busy when John entered.

He greeted Sherlock who made a show of being startled before looking up.

 ‘What are you up to?’ John asked.

‘I’m analysing the properties of river sand.’

‘Sounds interesting,’ John lied. He looked from Sherlock to the table. On it, there was an advent calendar. Even though it was only the sixth of December, all windows were opened and the chocolates removed.

Sherlock did his best pretending to be occupied with his microscope, wondering what John would make of it.

‘That’s not how advent calendars work.’

He put on his most disinterested voice. ‘Isn’t that up to the owner to decide?’

‘What was in it?’

‘Homemade chocolates.’

‘Any good?’

Sherlock grinned and gestured to the sealed plastic bags on the table. They were numbered from one to twenty-four, all containing one chocolate.

John looked at the chocolates and grinned back. ‘Did you actually delete the concept of chocolate from your memory?’

‘It was an anonymous gift. You can’t trust it.’

‘You must have had a hard time at Christmas.’

Sherlock chuckled. No gift in the Holmes household had ever been anonymous for long.

‘You do know who Santa, is, right?’ John added.

‘The guy with the beard and the red suit, yes, I’m aware. So far unimpressed. Apparently parents give children gifts and for some inexplicable reason they feel the need to pretend that the gifts come from Santa, instead of taking the credit themselves. Why this occurs is beyond me; if you want to give gifts, it’s not particularly efficient to wait and put them under a random fir tree and pretend they fell from the chimney that most people don’t have.’

‘A pine tree.’

‘Most definitely a fir.’

John shook his head. ‘So I gather you never celebrated Christmas in that way.’

‘Have you met me? Have you met Mycroft?’

‘Fair point.’

Sherlock picked up the first bag and his magnifying glass. Beneath it the pictured reindeer that was stamped onto the chocolate swelled to a gigantic size, but there was nothing else on the chocolate that drew his attention. ‘I never quite understood how parents make children believe the Santa story anyway.’

‘Well, they tell their children that every year, Santa comes from the North Pole, to bring children gifts—‘

Sherlock gave him a sceptical look. ‘Sounds very plausible already.’

‘Let me finish. He travels in a sleigh that is pulled by six reindeer, in some stories it’s seven.’

‘Which was a perfectly acceptable way to get around when it actually snowed in the winter—

‘Exactly.’

‘... in the nineteenth century. I mean if you’re trying to lie you should at least update it so that it would roughly fall in the same century we’re living in. I’m an expert when it comes to lying and this is not even remotely plausible—’

‘The reindeer can fly.’

Sherlock choked. ‘Flying reindeer? What child would believe something that stupid?’

‘Yoo-hoo.’ Mrs Hudson walked in with a bucket of warm water and a cloth. ‘Can I do the kitchen now?’ she asked.

‘Sure, just stay out of my fridge if you know what’s good for you.’

‘I learned that lesson a long time ago,’ she said but she smiled. She turned to John. ‘So often he doesn’t like me to clean anything at all. He likes dust a bit too much if you ask me.’

Her eye fell on the advent calendar. ‘Did no one ever teach you how to use an advent calendar?’

Sherlock noticed John glance at the bagged chocolates.

Mrs Hudson picked up the calendar, cleaned the table underneath, and put it down again. She rubbed her thumb against her index finger. A white residue had stuck to her fingers. ‘And you even put fake snow on it?’

‘Fingerprint powder.’

She smiled fondly. ‘Oh Sherlock, you’re hopeless at these kinds of things, aren’t you?’

‘You think they’re poisoned?’ John said.

Sherlock picked up bag number six and gave it to John. On the chocolate, there was a picture of a skull and crossbones.

‘That’s a clue,’ John said dryly.

‘An interesting murderer maybe?’ Mrs Hudson said cheerfully.

Sherlock sighed. ‘One can dream. Christmas is so boring with all the hardened criminals having tea with their mummies.’

It was silent as both John and Mrs Hudson tried and failed to imagine how a Christmas without crime would be a bad thing.

‘I’m trying to explain to Sherlock the concept of Santa,’ John eventually said.

Mrs Hudson looked from John to Sherlock and back to John. ‘Well, good luck with that.’

John chuckled. ‘I was getting to the point where Santa throws the gifts down the chimneys—‘

‘The non-existent chimneys,’ Sherlock interrupted.

‘And the gifts fly into the stockings that children have put out.’

Sherlock shook his head theatrically. ‘I never quite understood how that could be compelling to anyone. And apparently for some random reason, he gives toys to the good children and lumps of coal to the bad ones.’

‘It symbolises forgiveness,’ Mrs Hudson said firmly.

Sherlock frowned. ‘How does that symbolise forgiveness?’

‘Because no child ever receives a coal in their stocking.’

‘Might also signify forgetfulness.’

He was interrupted by the sound of his phone. It was Lestrade.

‘Ever heard of Santa Claus?’ Lestrade asked.

Sherlock rolled his eyes to John. ‘No, please tell me who he is? A murderer I should know of?’ he asked sarcastically.

Lestrade sighed. ‘Yes, it appears so. It seems he visited Winchcombe, a small village in the Cotswolds. And it looks like he has just flown away.’

 

They travelled to Cheltenham by train where they were picked up by Lestrade who brought them to the picturesque village of Winchcombe, a village that looked like it had just popped up out of a children’s picture book.

They stopped at a semi-detached house right at the edge of the village. The house and the big front garden were sealed with police tape and several police cars were parked along the road, the team seemingly scattered in the garden, and undoubtedly also inside the house.

Unlike its limestone neighbour, it was a half-timbered house, with dark brown, almost black framing and white plaster infill. The window panes were freshly painted and trimmed rhododendrons and a large patch of neatly mowed though rather soggy grass made up the front garden. Overall it looked like a place well cared for.

However, after his initial look, Sherlock didn’t care much for its architecture or maintenance. Once out of the car he didn’t say a word, but stood still, his eyes moving rapidly from the gravel of the footpath towards the front door, to the intact windows, up to the thatched roof, down to the lawn where on its left side, there was another area on the grass sealed with police tape. His eyes stopped there for one moment. Then he abruptly moved towards the door, pulling two blue nitrile gloves from his coat pocket. He heard John and Lestrade follow him.

Before Sherlock could push at the door, it was opened by a policeman.

‘Good afternoon,’ the man said.

Without so much as a look, Sherlock brushed past him, into the house.

Behind him, he heard Lestrade take care of the introductions. ‘John, this is Officer Tom Walker, head of the local police. He was the one who called me. Officer Walker, John Watson. ‘And that was Sherlock Holmes.’

The living room was old-fashioned with dark wooden furniture, a cosy enough place if it wasn’t for the dead man lying in the centre. Sherlock kneeled beside the body. The man was in his late forties, with dark blond, greying hair, wearing a brown jumper and jeans stained with paint, obviously not planning to go out that day. Next to him laid a bell that was connected to a leather strap. On the mantelpiece, there was a stocking with a carrot in it.

John, Lestrade and Walker entered the room and waited in silence.

‘He’s a middle manager of a shop,’ Sherlock said, pointing at the man’s hands. ‘He collects and paints miniature trains, if I recognise the paint under his nails correctly. Not liked much by his staff.’ Sherlock pointed to the smudges of gel in the man’s hair.

‘Cause of death seems to be suffocation, but this will need to be confirmed by a more thorough analysis. Probably strangled from behind.’ Sherlock inspected the victim’s face.

‘Have a look at the murder weapon,’ Officer Walker said. John saw that Walker’s eyes were brimming with excitement.

Carefully, Sherlock opened the victim’s mouth and pulled out what looked like a red-and-white lump of wool. With his gloved fingers, he straightened it, revealing its shape. It was a woollen sock, the counterpart of the one on the mantelpiece.

Lestrade pulled a face. ‘That’s one vicious Santa Claus.’

Sherlock carefully inspected the stocking, squishing and feeling it with its fingers. There was a hard lump at the bottom. He reached inside and pulled something out. It was a piece of coal.

‘But this is the strangest bit.’ He picked up the bell. It was attached to a leather strap with a clasp, improvised from a belt, obviously hand made by someone who didn’t have any skills in that area. It had just the right size to be a wristband.

‘For some reason, the killer wore this around his wrist,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘And it was very intentional.’

‘To announce his coming?’ Lestrade said. ‘That’s a rather original move for a murderer.’

‘The victim was strangled from behind.’ Sherlock turned the bell in his hands. It made a soft and high pitched sound. ‘The last thing he heard was a sleigh bell.’

 

Once Sherlock was done investigating, he beckoned John into the garden. He took John straight to the piece of grass that was sealed off, Lestrade and Walker behind them. Sherlock kneeled, took one look at the tracks, looked up again with a quick glance around the garden and grinned.

There were about eight police officers, six men and two women, mostly waiting, as these operations involved a lot of waiting, but conspicuously ignoring them. They were all relatively young. Although no one was looking at them directly, they were all positioned in a way so that they could see them very clearly.

He looked at Officer Walker who could barely conceal a grin, and Lestrade, who smiled broadly.

‘What d’ya make of that?’ Lestrade said.

Sherlock looked at John and grinned again. ‘John, why don’t you solve the case of the mysteriously giddy police force.’ He pointed at the tracks.

They were two, deep and longitudinal, about five feet apart, with no imprint, as if something had been dragged there. In between, there stood footprints that looked like boots, and hoof prints of an even toed animal. John pointed to the hoof prints.

‘I suppose these are not cows?’

Sherlock shook his head impatiently. ‘Of course not. And those...’ he pointed at the longitudinal tracks, ‘aren’t wheels either’.

He got up and carefully walked along the tracks, respecting the police seal. He felt how his shoes were sinking into the mud. On the other side of the tape, the tracks were easily recognisable in the muddy ground. He pointed to what he’d been looking for. In the middle of the muddy ground, the track suddenly seemed to disappear. Santa’s reindeer sleigh had gone up in the air.

John looked from the tracks to Sherlock with an expression of delight. ‘Well, Sherlock, you must admit that this is a bit weird. It’s probably not plausible that our killer believes we would blame Santa Claus, is it?’

Sherlock squatted and looked at the ground where the tracks disappeared. ‘Someone smart enough to create this trick is probably not delusional enough to believe that, though one also cannot entirely reject that hypothesis either. However, I suspect there is another reason.’

Lestrade and Walker joined them.

‘Interesting, don’t you think?’ said Walker.

Sherlock got up and pulled a pen from Lestrade’s pocket, Lestrade didn’t complain, and poked in the mud where the tracks had disappeared. The pen sunk deeply. He then looked and poked carefully at the mud.

‘The tracks look like a sleigh, although,’ he pointed at a small line within the tracks, ‘there appear to be small wheels within the runners. The boots are size seven and a half, the man weights approximately twelve stone nine. The animals are reindeer, Ragifer Tarandus, and looking at the size and depth of the imprints it’s a European subspecies: fennicus, platyrhynchus or tarandus but I have never immersed myself enough in deer prints to know the difference on sight. By the looks of it there were two, and they were at walk, which makes sense as they were obviously loaded into a truck or onto a ramp of some sorts.’

‘Yeah, obviously,’ said Lestrade sarcastically, gesturing at the disappearing tracks. ‘And for your information, the deer are mountain reindeer.’

Sherlock and John stared at him in astonishment.

‘That would make them tarandus. The deer in question are most likely to be from Scandinavia, but how do you know the subspecies?’ Sherlock asked.

‘They’re from Cairngorms, Scotland,’ said Lestrade.

Sherlock just stared.

‘What,’ Lestrade said. ‘I just googled reindeer and the herd in Cairngorms is the only herd in the UK and they’re missing a team of six, a sleigh and a truck. I’m not as stupid as you sometimes seem to think.’

 

Sherlock got up and walked back to the beginning of the path, to see if there would be any other traces. He looked at one of the police vans and the four people next to them. A woman with blonde hair and a green coat was crying. Two other women were trying to comfort her. A female constable was asking her questions.

Sherlock looked at the woman and the policewoman caught his glance. She walked up to him and held out her hand, which Sherlock ignored. She put her hand down again. ‘You’re Sherlock Holmes, I presume? I’m Officer Lara Owen; can I help you with anything?’

‘What do you know about the victim?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Just let me explain,’ said Officer Walker. As he approached Sherlock, the officers gave way to him; Owen shrugged and went back to the crying woman.

‘The victim is called Rupert Luton.’ Walker pointed at the woman. ‘This was his fiancée, Miranda Shepherd.’

Miranda gave Walker an angry look, then the woman next to her pulled her into an embrace. Miranda instantly started sobbing again. ‘Those two women are her friends: Gladys Fuller and Jane Tiler.’

Sherlock looked at the women. Miranda was a churchgoer who liked singing, knitting and World of Warcraft. Gladys was a slightly more dramatic woman, housewife, mother, choir singer, volunteer on a primary school and harbouring a sex obsession. Jane was the most religious of the three, also a singer and by the looks of her classy red coat a rather self-confident person.

‘Did Luton have any enemies?’

‘Not that we know of. He was a manager in the supermarket, and as you rightly concluded, he wasn’t always loved by his staff, but that’s hardly a motive for this.’

‘Anything can be a motive. Ex-girlfriends?’

‘None with a criminal record, but what might bee of interest is the lady’s ex-boyfriend: Charlie Brownrigge. He was a deejay in Cheltenham, and was once arrested for possession of cocaine.’

‘Not a very convincing motive either. However, the murderer was a man and by the looks of it, he’s done this alone so Brownrigge is definitely an option. Her boyfriend before this Charlie?’

Walker smiled a painful smile. ‘That’d be me.’

Sherlock looked him over from top to bottom. Although the length seemed to match, his shoe size was smaller and he was over ten pounds lighter than the imprints suggested.

‘Okay, Lestrade needs a list of all his associates, male, female, employees, friends, enemies, anything. Don’t forget to include yourself.’

He turned his back on the inspector. There were no traces to investigate further. He waved at John and Lestrade who came in his direction.

‘We’re done here,’ he announced. ‘Let’s find a pub before we go home.’

Two incredulous faces gaped back at him.

‘You?’ said Lestrade. ‘In a pub? Are you ill?’

Sherlock smiled. ‘Never better. The pieces of the puzzle are already falling into place’

 

Lestrade found them the nearest pub. While he and John devoted themselves to the local bitter, Sherlock limited himself to tea. Unlike average people, he wasn’t willing to give up his brainpower right at the beginning of a case.

‘It wasn’t so soggy everywhere. Quite possibly, the truck was on a slightly drier spot. You’ll probably find planks of wood inside it,’ he explained to Lestrade

‘You mean he parked the truck onto the wood and then loaded the reindeer sleigh into it. Why would anyone do that?’

Sherlock folded his hands together and thought for a moment. ‘For the audience,’ he finally said. ‘The only reason that makes sense is that he wanted to create those specific tracks. He wanted people to think of Christmas.’

He pulled out his phone. ‘Much like the sender of this advent calendar.’

Lestrade scrolled through the pictures, and he and John looked at them. Sherlock had taken pictures of all the chocolates with his phone. Sherlock knew what they saw. There was a picture of the advent calendar and then there were pictures of all the chocolates. The first one was a reindeer, then a bell, a sleigh, a carrot and a stocking.

‘Wait a second,’ said Lestrade. ‘We saw all those things. So are you suggesting that the guy who created this scene yesterday is the guy who sent you the calendar?’

‘Or multiple people, who knows, fact is that the murder was committed the sixth of December.’

Lestrade scrolled back; the sixth chocolate was a skull and crossbones.

John smirked. ‘Pirate themed.’

‘I don’t think they represent pirates in this case,’ Sherlock said.

Lestrade then scrolled forward and they looked at the pictures: carol singers, a tree, a candle, a tricycle, a pine cone, skull and crossbones, a ghost, Christmas decorations, a present, a candy cane, a slinky, skull and crossbones, a nativity scene, a Christmas cracker, a yule log, a church, a bell...

Sherlock took the phone and scrolled back. ‘Today is the seventh,’ he stopped at the picture with the carol singers, ‘the day of the singers.’ He scrolled one further, ‘tomorrow it’s Christmas tree day. The pattern is obvious: five chocolates with objects, the sixth one a skull and crossbones, then it repeats itself.’

Lestrade nodded. ‘And those skulls and crossbones must represent murders. One hell of an advent.’

‘There’s one exception...’ he took the phone and swiped to the last picture, December twenty fourth. It had not one but two skulls and crossbones.

 ‘That doesn’t look too good,’ said John.

‘I estimate that for that day, he’s not planning a murder, he’s planning a massacre.’

 


	2. Chapter 2

After their drinks, Lestrade took care of the rest of the murder case and John and Sherlock returned to London to work out the clues from the advent calendar.

In practice, this came down to Sherlock lying on his back on the sofa, not seeing anything but his mind palace. Sherlock had loaded all the pictures from the chocolates and attached to them the numbers of the days.

A mind palace worked best if one made it as visual as possible. He had taken the hilly countryside just outside Winchcombe as a backdrop and imagined three small hills in the foreground. On the first hill, there were the carol singers, now a small choir, the number seven attached with sticky notes to their foreheads, and annoyingly singing Jingle Bells over and over again, a giant fir tree with a toy, a candle and a pine cone underneath.

The second one had the ghost flying over it in circles, a nicely wrapped present with a giant candy cane, all decorated with Christmas lights and a slinky moving around on its own.

The third one had a large church on top with a bell in the tower, a live nativity scene inside, except for baby Jesus; there was a Yule log, and a Christmas cracker as a mobile

 ‘Decorating your mind palace for Christmas, are you?’

Sherlock looked into the direction of the voice. Next to him on the hill stood his brother.

Adding characters to a mind palace was his own invention. A large part of the characters was driven by subconscious processes, a much faster part of his brain, leaving room in his working memory for other tasks. Through the characters, which he had based on people around him, he could access information a lot quicker. It was a hack that was so effective that it had sped up the otherwise tedious process of looking through objects in imaginary space by at least a fivefold. The only drawback of this approach was that the characters sometimes seemed to have lives of their own.

‘You have to make a decision,’ said Mycroft. He pulled a smug face. ‘I think you’ve already made it, but apparently you feel the need to work it out in its entirety.’

Sherlock frowned at him. His mind palace imitation of his brother was the smartest character he had, but he could be incredibly annoying at times. ‘What are you talking about?’

Mycroft looked into the valley. ‘The trolley problem.’

From the hill, Sherlock followed his brother’s gaze into the valley. Train tracks had appeared. Two tracks from either side of hill three were were joined with a railroad switch in the middle of the hills. On the single track on the other side of the switch stood a modern train trolley.

‘Now imagine that on the right track, there are three people. On the left, there is only one.’

The people, four men in jeans and winter coats, appeared on the tracks.

‘The train trolley has gone loose and it can’t be stopped. The switch is set to the right. If you don’t do anything, they will be run over by the train.’

The trolley now moved, went to the right and ran over the men.

‘However, you have the opportunity to change the switch to the left.’

Mycroft looked at him. ‘The question to you is: will you change the switch? It will make you a murderer but on balance, you’ll save two lives.’

Sherlock looked at the tracks. ‘It’s the most sensible thing to do.’

‘Indeed.’ Mycroft looked at him intensely. ‘What is stopping you?’

The characters were in position again. The trolley moved, now turning left and running over the one man. The three men on the right track walked away.

‘There is a second part to this problem.’ Sherlock said.

‘You’re a professional,’ said Mycroft. ‘At least that’s what you call yourself. You cannot get involved in the second part.’ He pointed to the hill between the two tracks. On top of it was the church.

 

‘Did you make any connections?’ asked John.

Sherlock looked up; he was back on his sofa in Baker Street, feeling stiff all over from lying in the same position for hours.

‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said.

John chuckled. ‘I noticed that.’ He turned to the wall. Sherlock had printed all the photographs of the chocolates and stuck them on it in four rows of six. John looked at the second row. ‘So we’re connecting carol singers, a pine tree, a candle, a tricycle and a pine cone.

‘No, we’re connecting a church, a nativity scene, a Christmas cracker, a Yule log and a bell.’

‘You’re ignoring two murders in order to avoid a massacre?’ John looked tense with that realisation, even though he did seem to grasp the logic of it.

‘Yep.’ Sherlock folded his hands in front of his face and closed his eyes again. Instantly he was back on the first hill, looking at the church on hill number three. Time for a brainstorm. He mentally lifted the five objects and let them float in mid-air. He changed the church into a synagogue, then a mosque, a faculty building, a group of people performing a ritual, football supporters...

‘How can you do this?’

Next to him on the hill stood his mental representation of John, but it was the real John who had spoken.

‘Well, it takes a lot of practice to create a mind palace as elaborate...’

‘Letting someone be murdered.’

Sherlock opened his eyes, which instantly transferred him back home. He didn’t like being distracted like that. ‘I need a list of all churches in the Cotswolds and whether they’re doing a Christmas service the twenty-fourth.’

‘It’s the ninth today, in three days, someone will be killed. Since there is a tricycle involved, I doubt that this will be an adult.’

‘The killer would want us to go at this problem one by one which would put us at a disadvantage to solve the most important problem.’

‘Yes, I understand that. But you could devote at least some of your time to the other ones? Maybe they provide clues we would otherwise overlook.’

‘Seems like a considerable risk.’

‘But if you catch him earlier, you’re also preventing a massacre.’

‘Focusing on the last problem gives us more time and puts us in a better situation.’

‘In three days a child will die.’

‘You’re confusing importance with urgency...’

In his mind palace, the Christmas tree burned, a child underneath screamed.

‘...but you may have a point.’

His mind palace brother shook his head but he ignored it. He jumped up as he loaded the pictures into his working memory: carol singers, a Christmas tree, a candle, a tricycle and a pine cone. He repeated the words aloud. ‘What would bring those things together?’

‘Christmas would do.’

Sherlock looked at John who shrugged. ‘Those things can be found all over December.’

‘Yes, but specifically the twelfth...’ he rushed to his laptop and opened it. John followed and looked over his shoulder. He opened Google.

‘It has to be some kind of festival of sorts.’ He typed in Christmas Market Cotswolds and got his answer in the second result. There was an evening market in Winchcombe with candles on the twelfth of December.

 

And so it happened that on the twelfth, John and Sherlock made the trip to the Cotswolds again, hiring a car in Cheltenham. Sherlock had rung Lestrade and told him everything he knew, and although Lestrade agreed that Sherlock’s theory was indeed plausible, he was unable to cancel the market with a theory based on five chocolates.

Winchcombe looked even more saccharine in the evening, with warm light illuminating the old yellow limestone houses and Christmas decorations and flickering candles lighting up the village square.

As they got out of the car, Sherlock stood still and swept the area with his all his senses. The first thing he noticed was that it was busy; not only had people come from the entire area, given by the dialects and accents he heard, the market was also a tourist attraction. The second thing he noticed, much to his irritation, was that the market was not limited to the four rows of stalls on the village square. As far as he could see, the narrow streets were full of people and shop windows were lit and decorated and Christmas lights hung from side to side, arching over the streets.

He turned back and saw that John was observing him.

‘So where do we start?’’ asked John.

The truth was that he didn’t really know either. ‘There are candles everywhere. That leaves us looking for trees, pine cones, carol singers and a tricycle.’ He pulled a face. John grinned in return.

They looked around and then joined the masses on the village square. Sherlock realised that this was going to be hard. Because there were so many people around, they couldn’t see very far ahead. They looked into the stalls, just like regular shoppers. The tricycle would be the most unusual thing, so if they found one they’d probably be on the right track. However, the stalls were mostly about Christmas trinkets: miniature houses, candles, the random things people seemed to be compelled to buy this time of year. At another stall, people bought Glühwein in plastic cups. Then he heard it.

‘Sherlock?’ John pointed in the same direction. Singing voices. Manoeuvring through the crowd, they followed the direction of the sound. On the other side of the square, an all middle aged women’s choir was singing _Dreaming of a White Christmas_.

‘They’ve probably never heard of climate change,’ John joked but Sherlock wasn’t listening. He looked around. There were people standing around the choir, listening, a man dressed as Santa Claus was ringing his bell but as he walked by, he stopped the noise so that he wouldn’t disturb the listeners. There were no Christmas trees, no pine cones and certainly no tricycle.

Then he heard other singing, higher pitched, sounding like Silent Night. He nudged John and pointed in the direction of the sound.

John understood immediately. ‘Another choir? How many choirs would there be?’

He didn’t answer but swiftly made his way towards the sound, John grabbed his arm so he wouldn’t lose him as they walked through the crowd.

The other choir was made out of children, mostly about nine or ten years of age. There was a blonde woman dressed in red and white, Sherlock immediately identified her as a schoolteacher, and most of the spectators as parents.

‘Excuse me,’ he shouted at a woman who wore a Santa hat, one of the mothers watching. ‘Do you know a place where they sell toys? We’re looking for a tricycle.’

She looked at him, slightly disturbed, but then pointed in the direction of one of the small streets. Sherlock was off, hearing John thanking the woman, and feeling how his forearm was grabbed again. ‘We’d be better off finding the tricycle,’ he yelled as they ran.

They ran past the church, where there was another choir singing and past another Christmas tree, but this time they paid no attention.

The street was even more crowded than the market square and they were slowed down by families with children, people with wine or hot chocolate or sausages and they pushed through with difficulty.

John saw it before Sherlock: a small local toy store, entirely illuminated with Christmas lights. Even though there were plenty of children on the market, the shop was doing good business as the would-be Santas who had cleverly left their children at home now took the opportunity to buy the somewhat overpriced present their children wanted. Sherlock and John entered the shop.

They located the area for toddlers and ran towards it. In large boxes on the ground, they found tricycles. Sherlock looked around the hustle and bustle of the place; there was a Christmas tree, lots of lights but no candles or carol singers or pine cones.

He saw John looking at him and looked at his watch. It was almost nine o’ clock. Time was running out. They had not made a single connection. He looked back at John.

‘We’re doing this wrong.’

‘Maybe we’re in the wrong place. Maybe the whole idea of the Christmas market was wrong.’

‘It’s the same village and it’s the right date. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence.’

He closed his eyes and ignored the voices and movement around him. It was possible that this wasn’t what the killer had in mind but a market like this was too good an opportunity for someone local to let go. He had learned one thing, the guy loved to have an audience and he would have one here. If they were correct, then he also must be a local. And then it hit him.

‘John, imagine you’re on a Christmas fair in a village where everyone knows you and you don’t want to be recognised. What would you do?’

‘You mean he’s put on a disguise?’

‘Exactly!’ Two children ran past them and John and Sherlock both looked. The children were both dressed up as Santa Claus.

 

‘But there are even more people out there dressed as Santa than there are choirs,’ John protested.

‘That’s why it’s such a good disguise, come on.’ Sherlock sprinted out of the shop, John in pursuit.

Outside, they stopped for a moment until Sherlock saw the red of a Santa’s costume. They sprinted towards it. The man was standing on the side of the road, ringing a bell and singing. Sherlock stopped abruptly and felt how John bumped into him. Murderers wouldn’t stand still drawing attention to themselves.

‘That’s not him,’ he said and without further explanation, he ran on, back in the direction of the square.

He saw another Santa; this one was walking along with the people. They made their way towards him but when they were close enough, they saw that this man was walking with friends, relaxed and laughing together. Sherlock turned away, in the direction of St Peter’s Church again.

‘So this is what we’re doing? Running after everyone who’s dressed up as Santa?’ he heard John behind him.

He looked back. ‘Do you have a better idea?’

John clenched his teeth and shook his head.

The people were gathering on the street nearby the church, listening to the choir, women in white dresses, holding candles, _singing Carol of the Bells_. Sherlock looked from the women to the Christmas tree with the fake presents in front of the tree.

‘Sherlock!’ the alarm in John’s voice made Sherlock startle.

‘I saw a Santa talking to a child on a tricycle.’ John pointed to the crowd in the direction of the church.

Sherlock looked but saw neither child nor Santa.

John was already running and Sherlock followed him bursting right through the crowd, not even trying to be polite anymore, ignoring disapproving voices.

He bumped into John, who was standing still in the crowd and looking around.

‘It’s here, it’s happening,’ Sherlock shouted, pointing at the choir and the tree.

He now smelled smoke and looked around, trying to see something other than people. They could see the church and a bit of the choir. Then he turned to the Christmas tree with the fake presents in a pile underneath. On top of the presents were pine cones. He looked at the pile and suddenly saw what that could become.

‘He’s going to burn it,’ he said.

‘You can’t burn a live pine tree so easily, it’s just way too wet.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘It’s a fir tree and this one will burn. No real tree is ever so symmetrical and underneath real trees there are always some needles that have fallen out. This one has none. It’s a fake and some fake trees burn really well. And those presents are cardboard boxes and we don’t know what’s inside them.’

Sherlock looked at the crowd; everyone was looking at the choir, and then he pushed towards the tree. With a clearer view, he saw the familiar bright yellow and red of flames, coming out of the presents.

A high pitched scream came out of the direction of the tree, the voice of a child.

As one, Sherlock and John ran towards the tree. The boxes were on fire, flames reaching out to the lower branches. Sherlock kicked them apart but there were many. He saw John following the direction of the sound, and kicked boxes away from him. John found the child and while he was untying him, Sherlock saw that the lower branches had caught fire.

From the sound of the crowd behind him, he gathered that they too had worked out what was going on. Two men were now joining them, kicking boxes apart but it was a lost case. He saw John running away from the tree, carrying a little boy.

‘Stand back!’ he screamed to the men and they too ran away from the tree.

With a loud ‘woof’ the fire suddenly reached the top of the tree. The crowd scattered, singers and spectators alike.

Sherlock looked around, saw John with the child now at a safe distance and ran towards them. The boy was conscious and Sherlock didn’t see any obvious burn marks on his skin or clothes. He coughed. Sherlock looked at John.

‘Smoke,’ John said, ‘but otherwise he looks fine.’

‘Oliver!’ One of the men who were helping earlier, the man in the leather jacket, ran towards them and picked up the boy who embraced him and started crying.

‘He’s my boy!’ the man yelled to a surprised John.

They heard a woman scream. Out of the crowd, a woman in a white dress ran towards them and hugged the child.

They looked from the family to the burning tree, now illuminating the entire area. A smouldering pine cone burst with a crack.

 


	3. Chapter 3

It was almost two o clock when they finally got to their hotel in Cheltenham. They had spent hours at the local police station. In order to avoid trouble, Sherlock had told them that they’d just been there for the fair, something officer Owen didn’t entirely seem to believe, but she was tired too, so she probably just let it slide, knowing she could always contact them again. She smiled and was much kinder than Sherlock had remembered her.

Sherlock was glad that he’d had the foresight to find a hotel in Cheltenham and not Winchcombe, away from the drama of the Christmas market. It had turned out better than he’d expected but admittedly, that was mostly due to luck. They were sharing a large twin room in an old-fashioned style. He sat down on his bed, tired but not ready to go to sleep.

He felt tired but very satisfied. Not only had they seen a glimpse of the murderer, he now also had a clearer idea of what kind of person they were dealing with and how this person’s communication through the advent calendar worked.

‘Tea?’ John asked. .

‘Yes please.’

John boiled the kettle and made two mugs of tea.

Sherlock put his pillow up against the wall and leaned against it. ‘He’s a local and there’s something very particular about him: he wants to be seen and he wants certain people to be his audience. Find those people and we find our killer.’

John gave him a mug and sat down on the other bed with his own. ‘So you’re happy then?’ he asked.

‘Of course. We learned a few things about him and even the kid is alive.’

‘Right.’ John sipped his tea in silence. He looked exhausted.

Sherlock drank his tea and waited for John to speak his mind.

John put his tea mug on the nightstand and sighed. ‘I had to persuade you to come here.’

Sherlock rolled his eyes. ‘Getting involved emotionally with a case clouds my judgement; we’ve been over this before.’

‘Yes and it’s rubbish. You’ve manipulated me over and over again and then you’re surprised that I’m not laughing. It’s not exactly professional distance we’re talking about here.’

Sherlock felt how his frustration built. ‘When will you ever stop nagging about that? I’m not like anybody else. I thought that would be obvious by now.’

‘Because you just want people to see how clever you are. You even lie in order for people to find you clever. That’s not normal, Sherlock.’ John buried his face in his hands for a moment. Then he switched off his light and rolled onto his side.

Sherlock stared back, into the darkness. ‘Nobody ever claimed that I was normal.’

‘There’s something about you that is so cold, it’s unnerving.’ John said. ‘Be aware of that. Disrupting emotional processing severely impairs decision making. That’s a medical fact.’

 

While John went to sleep, Sherlock stayed awake and went back into his mind palace. One hill in the mind palace was now cleared of its objects.

‘You’ve worked yourself into quite a bit of trouble. Though you must admit that your friend has a point. You do like a bit of drama, don’t you?’

Sherlock looked at his brother who had appeared next to him. ‘Since when do you care about relationships?’

‘I’m not your brother. I’m part of your unconscious mind, and apparently it’s occupied with other things than the subject at hand.’ Mycroft gestured to the objects on the hills. ‘You could still do some good, instead of being consumed by sentiments. You’ve been behind every step on the way because you don’t plan ahead and let your emotions run your actions. Control yourself. ’

‘Only you could be berating me for saving a child.’

‘You saved a child, yes, well done Sherlock. But at whose expense?’ Mycroft pointed at the church. ‘Christmas eve. Lots of people attend a service at that time, even people who normally don’t go to church. Any chance you could connect any of the other objects?’

‘Cracker and log; murder weapons, most likely, some kind of bomb, nativity scene probably the topic of the sermon. Church and bell refer to location.’

‘So we need a church with a bell.’ Mycroft chuckled. ‘That’d narrow it down.’

Sherlock looked at the train tracks again.

‘No, Sherlock, you’re not paying attention.’ It was Molly, now standing on his other side. ‘There is a second part to this problem. With the train switch, most people would choose to flip the switch, saving two lives. In the second part of the problem, you’re standing on a bridge.’

Between hill one and hill three a bridge appeared. Then, he and Molly were on it.

‘It’s the same problem as with the switch, only now the trolley goes on a single track underneath a bridge. Three people are on the tracks and they will be killed if you don’t stop them. However, there’s one man on the bridge. If you push him off, that man will be killed, but the three men on the tracks will be saved.’

She looked at him. ‘The question is: would you push him off?’

He looked from her to the characters and back. ‘It would be logical.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re avoiding my question and I know why. With the switch, over sixty percent of people said they would change the switch, with the bridge, almost no one would push someone off the bridge, even though the gains and losses are exactly the same.’

‘You’re lying.’ Mycroft said. ‘You’d never push him off.’

‘But you’d think about it.’ John said. He now stood on his other side. ‘That’s what makes you different. It’s so cold that it’s not even cruel.’

‘Yes, that’s what you’re like, get over it, focus on the problem,’ Mycroft said, rolling his eyes. ‘Not everyone can fake their deaths to their own best friends. You are a calculating person.’

John nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right, you don’t care. You really don’t care.’

‘So get yourself together then,’ Mycroft said. ‘You’re always so emotional. People will die if you don’t get over your weaknesses. You have a responsibility. Focus!’

Sherlock opened his eyes, and was back into the hotel room, still shaken about what had happened. He’d just broken his mind palace.

 

The next day they drove back to London and met with Lestrade and Donovan in their office. Collaborating with the local police, they had interviewed almost half the village, found a few small village intrigues and ruled out Luton’s employees who all had alibies. They were not a step closer to the murderer. They decided to focus on the Christmas market case.

‘The child’s name is Oliver Fuller, child of Gladys Fuller and Edwin Fuller. He owns a garage,’ Lestrade said.

‘Miranda’s friend,’ John helpfully supplied. Sherlock gave him a look as if he were offended, but indeed he’d forgotten the name.

‘So we can rule out Gladys Fuller as a suspect. Enemies?’ Sherlock asked.

‘We could ask his peers at primary school,’ Donovan said sarcastically. ‘Maybe he’s a bully.’

‘Enemies of the parents of course.’

‘Edwin Fuller had a bad relationship with someone named Gary Hall,’ Lestrade said. ‘Something about insurance fraud.’

Sherlock looked out of the window. Somehow it seemed really absurd. ‘Those women are friends, that’s the key to this case. So they did something that got them hated. But what?’

Donovan scrolled through the file. ‘Miranda Shepherd was once Miranda Walker. She divorced Tom Walker two years ago. She said that Gladys Fuller supported her but that Jane Tiler was very upset about the divorce. It was against her worldview.’

‘Still hardly a reason for murder,’ John said. ‘And it was a man.’

‘Religion can be very motivational and she could have got help. We can’t rule out Jane Tiler just yet.

‘What about Tom Walker?’ John asked ‘He could be angry about the divorce, maybe he wanted revenge.’

‘She divorced him because he cheated on her, not the other way around,’ Donovan said.

Sherlock grinned to John. ‘Rather weak motive for revenge, don’t you think? However, we cannot rule him out completely. It’s also possible that someone targets him; policemen make a lot of enemies. It could be a criminal. This is obviously the work of a very manipulative person.’

‘So are you sure it isn’t you?’ Donovan joked.

Lestrade sighed. ‘The only plausible suspect so far has been Charlie Brownsrigge. He’s the only one with a criminal record and his separation with Shepherd wasn’t exactly smooth. He also fits the weight and height requirements from the tracks and he really hates Gladys Fuller.’

‘If it was him he would probably have worked alone. Arrest him.’

‘We don’t nearly have enough evidence.’

‘But it’s enough reason to hold him for a few days. In three days, there’s a murder planned in the Cotswolds on the eighteenth of December. If he’s in custody, we’ll know very soon whether he’s our man.’ Sherlock smiled a broad smile. ‘It’s an experiment.’

‘Oh, wonderful, an experiment,’ John said.

Sherlock took out the prints of the remaining chocolates and put them in two rows of five:

_Ghost, decorations, present, candy cane, slinky, skull and crossbones;_

_Nativity scene, Christmas cracker, yule log, church, bell, double skull and crossbones._

 

‘Chocolates? Your base your theory on chocolates?’ Donovan asked with a shocked expression on her face.

‘It’s complicated,’ Sherlock said.

The four of them looked at the pictures.

‘Those things are everywhere,’ Lestrade finally said. ‘Any idea about the church?’

‘The murder and the attack on the boy were both in Winchcombe; therefore it’s likely that the murderer is local. Quite possibly it’s the church in the same village.’

John nodded. ‘Saint Peter’s.’

‘That makes sense,’ Lestrade said. ‘Let’s call off the Christmas service, better safe than sorry.’

Sherlock looked at the pictures again. ‘We’re looking for things that are rare. He wants to give us the idea that we can work it out so he can gloat if we won’t.’ He closed his eyes and scrolled through the pictures in his mind. ‘There’s one rare thing here.’

‘The ghost,’ John said.

‘Indeed.’ Sherlock looked at Donovan. ‘Is there anything ghost related in the area? Haunted houses, horror films, Halloween-themed parties?’

She went to her computer and started searching. It only took a couple of minutes. In Winchcombe, there was a castle, Sudeley Castle, with a ghost story. They even did ghost tours. Now, there was a Christmas-themed ghost tour. Its date was the eighteenth of December.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Sudeley Castle was dark when they drove up to it in their rental car. It was located in the countryside not far from a forest. Sherlock didn’t like the lack of visibility on the meandering road through the hills and the fields. Much could be hidden there. They had contacted the local police and decided to create a trap. Because the killer was so focused on Sherlock’s presence, they decided that Sherlock and John would join the tour, submitting themselves to the killer’s need for a truly appreciative audience, while the police would be scattered throughout the castle and around the surrounding countryside, waiting for any sign of him. The castle’s owners had been informed of their presence.

When they arrived, they saw that eight other people had gathered five women and three men. Their guide was a woman in her late forties with long blonde hair and a green dress.

‘Welcome,’ she said in a low, eerie voice and Sherlock knew at once that she didn’t know about them or the police team. All the better, the fewer people knew, the less likely the knowledge would fall into the wrong hands.

The woman lit a candle and they all looked at her as she held it. The flickering light illuminated only their faces as it cast moving shadows on the walls behind them. ‘There are many places that attract spirits,’ she said. ‘And in this castle, many people have seen and heard strange things. They call her the Lady in Green.’

The group went inside and followed her to what looked like a dining room, all in old-fashioned style, though Sherlock didn’t know which century. The woman started to tell a story about the Lady in Green, and about the people who had seen her. Sherlock saw that John listened intensely, but he hardly gave the story any attention. He looked around the room, looking for anything that might be out of place, little traces of human tampering. To his irritation, the room had been cleaned recently.

Then he noticed something odd. With his foot, he could move the wooden floorboards a little bit. He squatted; the people were still listening to the story, gasping with excitement. A closer look at the plinths confirmed his suspicion. Normally, plinths would be entirely visible but in this case, they were obscured by the floorboards. The whole floor wasn’t the original but it just lay over the actual floor. He got up again, wondering what it could mean.

Then a woman screamed.

He looked at the group, they all gasped except John who stood firm but tense. Then he heard it too, the floor was creaking, as if there were footsteps but there was no one there. He sighed with disappointment. Pressure pads, he should have known.

 

The next room was a kitchen. It had a small window into the garden and Sherlock knew at once which special effect they would be seeing a little later.

He nudged John and pointed through the window. ‘Keep your eye on the garden, there’ll be a ghost there soon.’

Indeed, after a harrowing, and rather annoying story, the transparent statue of a woman suddenly appeared in the garden and then, after all the women had screamed, disappeared.

John looked at Sherlock. ‘How did you know?’

‘It’s an illusion called Pepper’s Ghost,’ Sherlock said. ‘It’s made with a semi-transparent mirror, and a concealed place where the actress can stand in the light. The window is very small, forcing our vision into one direction. An excellent opportunity for this trick.’

For the rest of the tour, Sherlock amused John by discovering a speaker in a chandelier, mimicking the guide’s cold reading techniques and explaining the movements of a dancing table by the ideomotor effect.

They were almost at the end of the tour as they walked past the stairs leading up to a tower when Sherlock stopped abruptly. There had been a faint tapping noise. He looked up the stairs.

‘What is it?’ John said but Sherlock put his finger against his lips.

The first things they saw were shadows, creeping over the stairs but then they saw them. Slinkys, ten, maybe twenty of them, making their way down the stairs in silence.

 

Lightning fast, Sherlock ran up the stairs, followed by John who was already phoning Lestrade. The staircase was long and narrow and they were both panting by the time they reached the top and the wooden door looming over it.

Sherlock opened the door and burst into the room. One glance told him they were too late. On the bed in the middle of the room laid a woman with brown hair, white and stiff, probably dead for hours. Around her and on top of her, there were candy canes and she was decorated with Christmas lights.

Sherlock looked at John, who’d just told Lestrade that the victim was dead and had hung up. ‘He’s cheating,’ Sherlock said. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘He just murdered a woman and you’re upset because he cheated?’

Sherlock looked at the woman. He expected that they would find that she’d been suffocated by one of the pillows. ‘We never had any chance; she’d been murdered before the tour even started.’

He looked back at John. ‘I think this time he didn’t want to take any risk. It’s not a game, it’s a show.’

John nodded. ‘To show us how clever he is.’

Footsteps came racing up the stairs soon followed by a Lestrade who was struggling for breath. -

Sherlock looked from him to the body and back. ‘I think we can rule out Charlie Brownsrigge,’ he said with a wry smile.

Lestrade rolled his eyes. ‘We’re combing over the whole castle,’ he panted. ‘If you’re finished here, please come downstairs and help us search.’

 

They searched for hours; the police had called in extra people, but they couldn’t find anyone suspicious in or around the castle. Eventually, they decided to end the large scale search and most of the people went home. Lestrade and his team stayed behind to do forensic research, some of which were undoubtedly hampered by all the search activities. Finally, Sherlock and John decided to call it a day and go to their hotel. They went to the parking lot to get into their rental car and then Sherlock suddenly froze.

On the road, just outside the parking lot, was a white car that was blinking its headlights. Sherlock looked and the headlights blinked again. He looked at John, then they walked towards the car. Immediately, it raced off.

‘It’s him!’ Sherlock shouted and they raced back to their rental car. Sherlock got in the driver’s seat and they spurted off, tyres screeching, after the white car, whose lights had just disappeared behind a bend.

They followed the car through the hills. Every now and then, they could see the red backlights appearing and disappearing again. Then the car slid into the forest and the trees almost immediately obscured their vision. Sherlock revved the engine. Soon, they were surrounded by trees.

 

The forest was pitch-black, only their headlights illuminating the road in front of them. Sherlock resisted the temptation to drive faster in order to catch up with the other car and slowed down. The local area map had showed that this forest wasn’t very large and there was only one road going through it. On the other side, it was countryside again, open landscape, difficult to hide in. If the guy was going to hide somewhere, it’d be here.

From the corner of his eye, he saw that John threw him a questioning look.

‘Look into the forest, left and right. Look for those little side roads that are so perfect to hide a car in,’ he said.

John didn’t ask any further questions and scanned the environment. Sherlock did the same.

The wood was so dark that it was almost impossible to make out any shapes. The headlights illuminated the trees, producing long shadows that turned around as they drove past. The trees, branches and leaves gave the illusion of movement all around them, even though Sherlock knew it was just the shadows and the wind.

‘Over there!’ John shouted and looked intensely up the road.

Sherlock followed his glance. There was a shape, car-like, ahead on the side of the road. He drove towards it. It wasn’t until the shape was caught in their headlights that they saw that it wasn’t a car.

It was a sleigh.

‘Why would someone put that over here?’ John asked.

‘Someone who wants to send a message,’ Sherlock said.

Sherlock pulled over and stopped in front of it. They got out and walked around it. Although they had torches with them, Sherlock left the headlights on. It was a large sleigh, wood, painted red, with a tiller, meaning that it was meant to be pulled by two animals. Sherlock looked at the runners and knew that this was the one that had made the tracks at the murder scene.

‘It’s the same one, isn’t it?’ John whispered.

Sherlock nodded. They looked around into the dark forest with their torches. It was almost impossible to see anything. Sherlock suddenly realised that for the killer, they were a giant beacon of light. They couldn’t see a thing but anyone could see them while hiding in the shadows. Then a shape drew his attention.

‘John,’ he whispered urgently and pointed.

John looked. ‘Looks like his car.’

‘He’s here,’ Sherlock said.

He opened the car door and switched off the lights. Now they stood in pitch-black while their eyes adjusted. Then they heard it. A ringing sound, irregular as if it was something that breathed and moved.

A sleigh bell.

Sherlock grabbed Johns arm and ran for the bushes. They listened. The sleigh bell now moved away from them. John and Sherlock gave each other a short look and then got up and ran after the sound. It seemed to speed up. Sherlock used his torch to watch his footing as he stumbled over branches and roots. With the tiny beam of light now down, the darkness in front of them was drawn towards them.

The sound disappeared and he suddenly halted, making John bump into him. They listened. Now the sound came from a sharp angle to their left. They ran towards it. The sound immediately became stronger and lost its irregularity. Sherlock heard it move away from them.

He stopped again and listened. It was silent. Then he heard a faint bell sound to their right. He looked at his friend, John had heard it too.

Then he heard it on the left again.

They turned to the left and shone with their torches. There was nothing but the blackness and the trees.

There was another sound of bells from behind them. They startled and looked back. Nothing but darkness and forest.

Bells from behind them startled them again. Sherlock heard it moving closer. They were surrounded.

Without words, they moved back to back, shining their lights around the trees. There was nothing to be seen. Sherlock heard the bells now accompanied by cracking of branches and leaves, movements of something big. He shone in its direction. The branches of the shrubs parted and then he saw antlers.

He nudged John and pointed. The antlers were now followed by the rest of the animal. A reindeer, about four feet high, with red bell tack around its shoulders and chest. It looked at Sherlock and carefully stretched its neck towards him as if it wanted to smell.

John sighed with relief. ‘We’re in a herd of reindeer.’

‘Your ability to notice the obvious amazes me,’ Sherlock answered.

He now saw another reindeer on their right hand side, eating mosses from a tree trunk, bells ringing softly.

‘There’s another one over here,’ John said, pointing behind them. He walked towards it.

Sherlock focused on the one that was close. The mud on its feet told him that the animal had been in the forest for more than a day, damage of the fur around the tack suggested that it had worn that tack for several days, longer than it was designed for.

A scream. John’s voice.

Sherlock startled, turned around shone his light and saw nothing.

‘Ho, ho, ho,’ said an unfamiliar voice.

Out of the darkness came John, but he was held by someone in red, with a big knife at his throat. They moved closer. The costume was a Santa Claus costume, complete with big belly and moustache and beard.

‘Ho, ho, fucking ho,’ Santa said.

‘What do you want?’ Sherlock yelled. ‘Why did you bring us here?’

Santa laughed. ‘I just wanted to give you a little gift. Thought it was better given in private.’

‘Oh is it that kind of a gift,’ John said.

‘Don’t you move, dear Watson,’ Santa said and with his left hand, he reached into his pocket and threw something at Sherlock who jumped back.

Santa laughed again. ‘Don’t worry; it’s not going to bite you.’

Sherlock picked up the object, it was about half a foot long, soft and wrapped in wrapping paper.

‘Come on, open it,’ Santa said.

Holding the package as far away from him as possible, Sherlock unwrapped it, to reveal a cylindrical shape: a Christmas cracker.

Sherlock looked at Santa. ‘You’re too early.’

‘Oh, it’s just a laugh.’ Santa grinned and gestured Sherlock to open it.

‘Sherlock, it could be a bomb,’ John said tensely.

‘It’s not, it’s not,’ said Santa. ‘Here,’ he held out his hand, ‘let’s pull it together.’

Sherlock took the one end and gave the other one to Santa. They pulled.

With a loud crack, the cracker opened. Sherlock was holding the longer part. He looked inside with his torch, it looked almost exactly like an ordinary Christmas cracker but he knew it’d been tampered with. He took out the joke.

‘You keep that with you.’ Santa said. ‘And if you would excuse me, I’m going to take your friend on a little walk and you’re staying here. If you move, I’ll kill him. And would you please tell him not to follow me after I let him go? It’d make it so hard for him to survive.’

Sherlock looked at John. It was indeed quite plausible that John would try something like that. ‘Stab wounds are more lethal than bullets and you’re not armed. Let him go,’ he said to John.

They moved into the darkness. Sherlock didn’t move while the reindeer was now licking his hand.

 

It wasn’t too long until he heard the sound of bushes again and John returned, out of breath.

‘He only took me about ten yards,’ John said. ‘He probably found it very annoying to walk with me and I kept asking him to let me go.’

‘I knew he wouldn’t kill you,’ Sherlock said.

‘How?’

‘Because so far his murders have been rather specific people from the village. People who all knew each other. He’s not a mass murderer who’s doing it for the thrill, there’s something very deliberate about this. You fall out of the pattern. Besides, he wants us to see how he’s outsmarted us. He wants an audience.’

‘Well, you could’ve told me that before he put a knife to my throat.’

Sherlock didn’t answer but pulled out his phone. He didn’t have any reception. He put it back. The reindeer was still next to him. He took it by the head collar.

‘John, could you take another one?’ He sighed. ‘At least we found something this night.’

John took another reindeer and they slowly made their way back to the car, using their torches to walk. The other reindeer followed them, driven by their herding instinct, and also, Sherlock suspected, because they associated humans with food.

‘So do you have any theories at all?’ John asked while he beat bushes apart.

‘Three murders in and around Winchcombe. The pattern has been consistent with our hypothesis. He’s from this village and there’s one church in the middle.’

‘That’s not a great deal of new information,’ John said under his breath.

 

When they were on the road, John had a little bit of reception so he called Lestrade who managed to arrange a local farmer to pick up the reindeer in a truck. Sherlock and John helped untacking them, once they were in the truck and the farmer took them home to give them food and water until they’d be picked up the next day by their owner.

It was three o’ clock at night when they finally got back to their hotel and met a very grumpy Lestrade who could tell them that the victim was Vicky Williams, Officer Walker’s girlfriend.

The Christmas cracker joke was a standard joke:

_What do you get if Santa goes down the chimney when a fire is lit?_

_Krisp Kringle!_

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

The week after that nothing really happened. Lestrade had made sure that the church service was cancelled and that there would be extra police in the village at the twenty fourth. After they had gone over the case in every way, Lestrade had just filed it and moved on to other things. Sherlock had disagreed. He didn’t like the idea of still knowing so little about this man but he was fairly certain that cancelling a church service wouldn’t stop him carrying out his plan.

In practice, that meant that while Lestrade and John got on with their lives, Sherlock spent his days on his sofa in his mind palace. It didn’t work terribly well; his characters were still shouting at him, distracting him from the problem. John came by several times, but Sherlock either hardly saw him at all or he was so frustrated that John just left in annoyance.

 

Now it was December the twenty fourth and still he hadn’t come any closer to a solution. Hill number three was now also cleared of its objects; he had put the suspects there instead, with name tags and tags explaining who related to whom and in what way. He’d connected them with lint: red for romantic relationships and blood bonds, yellow for friendships, blue for professional relationships, black for adversaries. The train tracks, the switch and bridge were still in place as were the characters and the clues on hill number four. He was standing on the first hill, looking out on it.

‘So you’ve allowed yourself to be led by emotion, wasted a lot of time and didn’t even save the victim.’ It was Mycroft, of course, standing on his left side. ‘Can you finally please get over yourself?’

Mycroft just couldn’t behave anymore. Sherlock ignored the character and focused on the objects.

‘Oh, a church with a bell with a bomb on it, we’ve been there before, haven’t we? Very enlightening.’

Sherlock looked at his brother. ‘You’re annoying.’

Because the brother tended to be right, he moved his attention to the hill with victims and suspects. He put top hats on Gladys, Oliver and Charlie to indicate that he ruled them out. He couldn’t just delete them because they were still needed to form a pattern.

‘You just manipulate everyone. Doesn’t that bother you?’ John was now standing on his right side. ‘You’re hardly human, are you?’

‘That’s probably a good thing,’ Mycroft said. ‘So far I’ve been rather unimpressed by humans.’ Mycroft turned to Sherlock. ‘I’m sorry that you have trouble with your friend but you need to get on with the problem.’

Sherlock focused on the people again. He now saw that most of the lint was connected to Miranda except Vicky and Oliver.

‘You know what this is?’ Mycroft asked. ‘It’s weakness. You’re weak, Sherlock, you were always so weak.’

‘No wonder you don’t have any friends. I don’t know what I was thinking,’ John said.

‘That’s the way you are,’ Mycroft said.

Sherlock buried his face in his hands. ‘Enough!’ he shouted.

 

And he was back on his sofa in Baker Street. On the table, a cup of tea seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He looked up; Mrs Hudson sat in John’s chair. She smiled.

‘You look a bit off, dear,’ she said, ‘is everything okay in that mind palace of yours?’

Sherlock pulled a face. Then he sat up and took the tea. The hot beverage somehow seemed to relax him. ‘Have I told you that I create characters in my mind palace as shortcuts?’

‘No, I daresay you never tell me anything of that sort.’

‘Well, I create characters from people in my life and they perform certain functions on autopilot, thus freeing myself for other things. For example, Mycroft tends to spot patterns and keeps me focused; Molly knows everything about forensic pathology, John talks about the intricacies of human interactions and Mary knows an awful lot about bullets.’

Mrs Hudson giggled. ‘Oh really, how peculiar. And what do I do?’

‘You have the best recipe for blackcurrant cake.’

‘No I don’t.’ She sighed. ‘Well, I understand you can’t find much use for me when you’re doing criminal investigations but could you perhaps tell me your problem?’

‘The characters are now only shouting at me.’

‘Oh, dear. What do they say?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

She smiled kindly. ‘You probably feel guilt then.’

He stared back. He didn’t feel anything.

‘I don’t think so,’ he finally said.

‘Oh, you poor man. Of course you feel guilt.’ Suddenly, she had a sly smile around her lips. ‘To which character do they shout all those nasty things?’

‘To me.’

‘But not a separate character.’

‘No, that wouldn’t make any sense.’

‘You want to look at the problem objectively, right? So take another character, or create a new one, you never use me apparently. Then have them shout it at her and see how she reacts.’

‘Sounds strange.’

‘Try it.’

He folded his hands in front of his face and closed his eyes.

 

And he was back in the mind palace, on the hill, John and Mycroft standing next to him. ‘Okay, here we go then,’ he said and snapped his fingers. Mrs Hudson appeared, just standing there, smiling, slightly out of place on the hill.

‘Go shout,’ he said to John and Mycroft.

Mycroft just raised an eyebrow.

John frowned. ‘Why would I shout at her?’

‘Come, on, it’s an experiment, you’re my characters.’

Mycroft reluctantly turned to Mrs Hudson. ‘What do I say?’ he asked Sherlock.

‘Whatever you say to me.’

‘You’re weak,’ Mycroft said to Mrs Hudson. ‘There’ll be nothing left of you if you don’t pull yourself together now. You’re so weak it’s disgusting.’

‘Ooh!’ Mrs Hudson brought her hands to her mouth in surprise and shock.

‘You’re the coldest person I ever met,’ John said.

‘You’re just horrible,’ Mrs Hudson gasped with broken voice. She turned around and briskly walked away, tears in her eyes.

 

Sherlock opened his eyes. ‘It doesn’t bloody work!’

Mrs Hudson giggled. ‘So you figured it out then?’

‘What the hell could I have figured out if it doesn’t work?!’

She got up and her voice sounded strict as she spoke. ‘You still have a lot to learn, young man.’

‘Don’t we all?’ Sherlock sighed, rolled onto his back on the sofa and looked at the ceiling. The doorbell rang, but he didn’t move.

Mrs Hudson walked out of the door but then suddenly stepped back in again.

‘You mustn’t beat yourself up so much.’ She sighed. Then she smiled. ‘You know, people don’t actually connect with other people through their strengths.’

 

She went downstairs. He listened to her opening the door, greeting the people who came in. He recognised John and Mary’s voices and then their footsteps coming upstairs. He turned onto his back again, dreading the conversation that was about to start.

Instead, Mary walked up to him with big steps and handed him his coat. ‘Let’s go Sherlock, we’re going on a little trip to the Cotswolds,’ she said with a firm look in her eyes.

Sherlock looked from her to John, who shrugged apologetically.

‘Don’t you have a little human to look after?’ Sherlock said as he followed them to their car.

‘With Cath,’ Mary said and got into the driver’s seat. ‘We’ve done that before.’

John went next to her and Sherlock behind them. They drove off. Traffic in London was insane on a good day, but the day before Christmas it had become completely mad. Carefully, Mary weaved her way out of the city.

‘Why are we going to the Cotswolds?’ Sherlock asked.

‘My Christmas present.’ Mary giggled. ‘I’ve been told they’re blowing up a church and it’s going to be spectacular.’

Sherlock rolled his eyes. ‘Very funny.’

‘John is worried about you,’ Mary said.

‘I’m not.’ John protested and Mary gave him a look.

‘Maybe a bit.’ John looked at Sherlock and grinned. ‘Your mood seemed to have deteriorated even more than usual.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘I just can’t work it out. The guy is clever and just shutting down the church is too obvious a move. Something is going to happen tonight.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Mary said, while overtaking a bus. ‘I just hoped that maybe going there might help.’ Mary looked him intensely in the eyes and then focused on the road again. ‘What kind of person do you think the killer is?’

‘He’s cruel, someone who feels wronged, someone who wants a lot of attention.’

‘Back when I did infiltration work for the CIA, I met a lot of these characters. I think you’re dealing with a narcissist.’

Sherlock nodded. ‘I agree. This is someone who wants an audience to show how clever he is.’

‘I learned a little bit about this in medical school,’ John said. ‘They are people who create a grandiose self-image. Very annoying to be around, I think.’ He looked at Sherlock.

‘We all have a little narcissism in us.’ Mary said.

‘Some more than others,’ John said.

‘But for a proper narcissist,’ Mary continued, ‘it’s much more extreme. He or she, though most of them are men, cannot handle even the smallest injury to the ego.’

Sherlock remembered his mind palace Mrs Hudson running away crying. ‘He doesn’t want to feel that pain.’

‘No one likes that pain, Sherlock, but a narcissist goes to extraordinary lengths to get out of it. He creates an entire image of himself, like a character in a film. This is where he can be the smartest, the strongest, the most powerful. He needs to believe it. Everyone needs to believe it.’

Sherlock imagined the scene. ‘He’ll lie and lie,’ he said, ‘to others and to himself, everything to protect his self-image. The web of lies becomes more and more complex until the inevitable conclusion,’

Mary nodded, looking at Sherlock in the rear view mirror. ‘It crashes down.’

‘Then what will happen?’

‘Narcissistic rage,’ said John. ‘The person sinks into a state of anger and depression. Though very rarely would it turn someone into murderer.’

‘Not as rarely as you might imagine,’ Mary said.

‘Many inexplicable crimes have this process at their roots.’ Sherlock said. ‘His self-image has cracked and now we see the rage and desperation. There’s no way back, so he creates a new self-image: the serial killer who is too smart for Sherlock Holmes.’

Mary nodded. ‘That explains the advent calendar, the reindeer and the dressing up.’

Sherlock smiled. ‘It’s like a piece of art. And now he wants to go out with a bang so that everyone will remember him.’

‘Suicide by cop,’ Mary said. She shrugged. ‘Or by bomb, possibly.’

‘So all we need to do now is to work out who would fit that pattern and whose pride was broken.’

 

She got onto the motorway and finally, the car could get up to speed. Sherlock closed his eyes and in his mind palace, went over all the suspects: Miranda Shepherd, Jane Tiler, the Fullers, Gary Hall, Tom Walker, and basically all the criminals from the local area. He pulled out their histories, vast lists of random events that happened in their lives. The trick was to get the right combination of events and character traits, not in the least complicated by the fact that quite a lot of the criminals ranked pretty high on the narcissism scale already.

 

He opened his eyes again and saw that it was already dark. He looked at his watch, it was quarter past ten. Time had gone by without him even noticing it. ‘Walker’s wife divorced him,’ he said.

John looked around. ‘Yes, but that was because he cheated, not the other way around.’

‘For a narcissist, that doesn’t matter.’ Mary said. ‘They believe they’re entitled to everything, therefore, when they are wronged, however justified, they will feel rage,’

Sherlock nodded. That was his conclusion too. He closed his eyes and remembered their first meeting. Walker had dismissed a colleague, Owens, who had seemed to be afraid of him. She’d been much nicer and opener when they were at the police office. The staff all gave way to him as soon as he appeared and they were all so inexplicably young.

‘Young staff, meaning a high turnover rate,’ he said.

‘So they’re running away,’ Mary said. ‘He’s obviously not a very good boss.’ She chuckled.

‘Walker wasn’t on duty when the market was held,’ John said. ‘He’d have the opportunity. But in the castle, he stood guard with his team.’

‘But the woman had been murdered hours ago.’ Sherlock said. ‘And since he’s the boss, he could easily have asked his colleagues to go elsewhere while he set up the Slinkys. He’d just have to put the Slinkys on the stairs, run down and join the police force in their search.’

Mary nodded. ‘So that would explain why you couldn’t find him in the castle, despite having over twenty police officers searching for him.’

 

Sherlock took his phone and rang Lestrade, who picked up with a short and grumpy ‘hello?’ Sherlock understood that Lestrade was relaxing at home and had no intention to get to work at this hour.

‘The tree on the Christmas market,’ Sherlock asked. ‘Where did it come from?’

He heard how Lestrade opened his laptop and clicked his way to the information.

‘It was a gift from the local police force,’ Lestrade finally said. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Tom Walker, where does he go to church?’

Lestrade clicked some more. ‘He and his ex-wife Miranda Shepherd always went to Gloucester Cathedral. She sings in a choir there, he was part of a charity group called Friends of the Cathedral. After the divorce he stopped going so frequently.’ His voice suddenly sounded alarmed. ‘You mean we’ve closed the wrong church?’

Sherlock sighed. ‘I told you this guy is clever. Find out whether the service has already begun. If it hasn’t, cancel it, if it has, call me back. Then we might have a bit of a problem on our hands.’

‘Evacuation would trigger Walker to set off the bomb.’ Lestrade swore and hung up.

Two minutes later he called back. ‘The service started at ten,’ he said shortly.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Mary headed to Gloucester. When they arrived, the church bell tolled. They drove around, looking for anything conspicuous; a person hiding in a car, a camera or microphone somewhere. When they were assured that no one was monitoring the cathedral’s surroundings, Mary parked the car on the parking lot near the entrance which was on the side of the nave. The cathedral was a huge and majestic building with a large tower.

They crossed the square between the parking lot and the entrance. The doors were closed. They looked at each other. Sherlock quickly thought of the best way to get in without causing any disturbance that might inform Walker of their presence. Then he realised that for safety reasons, churches don’t lock their doors when they’re in service. He tried the door, it opened and they saw an usher in black uniform. He put a finger against his lips. ‘I’m sorry but you’re quite late,’ he whispered. ‘I’m afraid the service has already started.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Mary said with tears in her eyes. ‘We came all the way from London for this service but there was an accident on the A40.’

The usher still looked stern. Sherlock put his foot between the doors and grabbed the usher by the collar, pushing him backwards into the church. The usher immediately fought back.

‘Shhh!’ Sherlock said in his ear. ‘There’s a bomb in this church and if we evacuate, we’ll probably set it off. Now help us.’

The usher relaxed his grip and stepped back. He’d turned completely white. They were in a hallway that was separate from the actual church. John and Mary entered behind them. Mary had immediately stopped her performance.

‘What can we do?’ the usher asked with a trembling voice.

‘He can probably see us,’ Sherlock whispered. ‘Is Tom Walker attending the service?’

‘We don’t keep track of the people who attend Midnight Mass,’ the usher said.

‘He probably isn’t, if there’s really a bomb,’ John said.

Mary shook her head. ‘You never know with these kinds of people.’

‘Does he work for the church?’ Sherlock asked the usher.

‘No, I think he works for a charity that collects money for the church,’ the usher said.

Sherlock looked at Mary. ‘You’re the only one he’s never seen, go into the church and check whether he’s there, or whether there’s a camera or something like a bomb.’

‘Let me bring you,’ the usher said but Sherlock shook his head. ‘You need to stay here so we can ask a few questions.’

Mary took her phone out of her handbag, googled Tom Walker and showed the picture to John who nodded. Then she went inside.

 

The church inside was even more beautiful with gigantic archways and pillars. The organ played and the people were singing a hymn. The choir were dressed in red and the clergy were dressed in white and gold, including the Dean who was leading the service. There were two large candles on either side of the altar and a large Advent Crown in front of it with the four advent candles lit. The large middle one would probably be lit at twelve, Mary suspected. The majestic looks, the sounds and the smells were truly awe inspiring.

Normally it would have been the polite way to quietly move to the back pew but that’s not what Mary did. Phone in hand, she walked through the walkway between the pews, in the middle of the nave. The light of the phone illuminated her face as she honoured all the people in the pews with a long look. The looks she received back weren’t exactly kind, but she didn’t see Walker.

 She finally went to the front pew, sat down at an empty spot and immediately turned around, looking at the people again. Her second check gave the same result; Walker wasn’t attending.

 _He’s not here,_ she texted to Sherlock.

Her phone bleeped with the incoming message. _Camera?_

The woman next to her gave her a disapproving look.

 

The usher had seen what Sherlock had texted. ‘They’re filming the service, is that what you mean?’

‘Was that Walker’s idea?’ Sherlock asked.

The usher shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Shall I ask the guy to stop filming?’

‘No!’ Sherlock said sharply.

‘Wait,’ John said. ‘The guy? There isn’t a film crew?’

‘No, just a guy with a camera and a tripod.’

John looked surprised. ‘That’s not very professional.’

‘Is he a member of the charity?’ Sherlock asked.

‘I could ask.’

‘Don’t let the camera hear you, in fact, just get the guy over here. The camera can be alone for a bit if it’s on a tripod.’

The usher went inside.

Sherlock’s phone bleeped. _Camera guy at the back of the church._

‘What do we do? John asked. If we stop the recording, surely the bomb will go off.’

‘So the answer is obvious. We don’t stop it.’

The usher came back with a man in his sixties wearing black clothes. ‘He’s from the charity,’ the usher said.

‘Did Tom Walker come up with the idea?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Yes, it’s his camera, actually,’ the man said and gave him a questioning look. ‘He said he had to work.’ The usher smiled reassuringly.

‘Did your organisation do something for Christmas?’

‘Uh, yes, they were collecting money for a gift,’ he slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t remember what gift they eventually settled on. It’s usually just money for the church, you see, but this time they wanted to also give something physical. I can’t quite remember what. I wasn’t too involved in the whole planning of it, you see.’

Sherlock grinded his teeth as he controlled his frustration. At least they’d found the camera. They couldn’t switch it off but they could move it.

He called Mary.

 

The church was just engaged in a moment of silent prayer when Mary’s happy ringtone disturbed the peace.

‘Please,’ said the Dean, ‘switch off your phone.’ He sounded rather irritated.

Mary smiled apologetically, and then picked up her phone. ‘What?!’ she whispered loudly.

The Dean gestured to one of the clergy members who tapped Mary on the shoulder. ‘One moment,’ Mary said.

‘Do you see any place where they could place a bomb?’ Sherlock asked.

Mary got up, looked up and down the church and then moved to the side, so that no one would hear her whispering voice. She gestured the clergy member to follow her, which he did.

She made sure he understood her as she answered. ‘As you probably know, the church is built in a cross shape, with one short end where the altar is and one long end, which is the nave where the visitors are. In the middle of the cross is the choir, who are standing on either side of the middle walkway. For maximum impact, the bomb should be placed in the middle of the cross, which is right in the middle of the choir.’

The clergy member looked at her in horror. With her free hand, she put her finger over her lips and then grabbed his sleeve.

‘Listen, Sherlock,’ she continued, ‘there’s nothing there in the middle so either he didn’t get a chance to put it there or it’s under the floor. I’ve got a clergy member here who might help us.’

She looked at him. ‘Has there been any building done?’

He shook his head.

‘Okay, no building, she said, it must be somewhere else.’

 

Sherlock looked at the usher and the cameraman. He wanted to get inside the church and now he could. The camera probably sent a signal to Walker’s laptop or phone or something. He’d just have to make sure the camera didn’t catch anything visual or audible that could tip Walker of his presence.

‘You,’ he pointed at the cameraman. ‘That camera must change position. It may not see or hear anything unusual. Move the camera forward, through the church, as if it were part of the recording and place it in the middle of the choir, towards the altar.’ He looked the man straight into the eyes. ‘Do not let it see me or we’re all dead, do you understand?’

The man nodded, his hands were trembling now.

‘Mary?’ Sherlock asked. ‘Give me that clergy person.’

‘Hello?’ said a whispering male voice.

‘You heard about the bomb, right? There will be a camera moving into the choir. That choir needs to make a lot of noise. When they’re singing, we can evacuate the church. Speak to whoever is running the service.’

‘Okay.’

Sherlock turned to the usher. ‘When the choir is singing, start evacuating, last pews first.’

The usher nodded. Sherlock looked at John. ‘Let’s go inside.’

 

They followed the cameraman into the church, the Dean had just begun with his sermon, taking care to stay behind the camera. The cameraman took up the camera and tripod and slowly walked towards the front, filming the people left and right. Sherlock thought that must be a rather shaky image. After he had talked about the Christmas theme of Christ made flesh, the idea that the supernatural could be natural after all, and thereby defining itself out of existence, the Dean was now contrasting it with the Easter story of doubting Thomas, a story Sherlock thought to be idiotic at best. They followed the cameraman at a safe distance.

The Dean looked up at the cameraman and Sherlock and John, gave them a frown and continued the sermon. Sherlock saw a clergy member scribbling something on a piece of paper. The cameraman put the camera in the middle of the choir, facing the altar, just as the Dean said: ‘Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.’ Sherlock looked at John and pulled a face. With that attitude no crime would ever be solved.

The clergy member went over to the Dean and gave him the piece of paper. The Dean interrupted the sermon to read it. When he finished, he looked up at Sherlock and John. Sherlock gestured him to continue. He continued the sermon but brought it to an end as quickly as possible.

‘And now,’ he said. ‘Choir and congregation, please turn your pages to Oh come, All Ye Faithful. It’s on the second last page.’

There was some mumbling, the sound of turning pages and several confused looks, because this was not what it said in the liturgy. Then, after a few awkward moments of silence, the organ played the first note and the choir started the song.

Sherlock looked at the back and saw the usher and several clergy members evacuating the last pews. His heart raced; as soon as Walker would hear anything, the whole thing would be over. He focused, now seeing every detail, every wrinkle in the people’s clothing, every stain on the floor, every piece of damage to the wooden pews, every needle of the Advent Crown, every drop of wax from the candles.

He remembered the chocolates: church and bell they had found, they referred to the location, the nativity scene for the subject of the sermon, yule log and Christmas cracker for the bomb. A Christmas cracker was always pulled by two people. A clenched feeling in his chest, he opened his eyes and looked at the Advent Crown.

‘A Christmas cracker is always pulled by two people,’ he mumbled to John. ‘They really shouldn’t light that fifth candle.’

John looked and Sherlock knew that he saw the same thing that he saw. It was a giant candle, big enough to hide several pounds of C4.

Sherlock caught the Dean’s eye and nodded towards the candle. He saw the man’s face whiten but otherwise, the Dean stayed in his role. The choir was now also looking at him, confused looks as they saw the people leaving. The church was now half empty, people were mumbling, they didn’t understand what was going on. The clergy did their best to convey a sense of urgency through their looks and gestured people to be quiet. Sherlock gestured to the choir to sing more loudly. Then he saw Miranda Shepherd. She had recognised him. Her face looked tense, she knew something bad was about to happen. Then she sang louder than everyone else, the people surrounding her doing their best to match her volume.

Mary walked up, carefully staying behind the camera, and stood next to John. Sherlock gestured for the cameraman to leave and grabbed the camera. He pointed it to the altar and slowly zoomed in. Now the altar filled the whole picture. He pointed at the clergy and gestured them to leave quietly. They looked at the Dean who nodded. They left, now it was just Sherlock, John, Mary, the Dean and the choir.

Sherlock went to the first candle he saw and blew it out, John and Mary followed his example until all candles were out. The choir got to the end of the song and looked at them.

The Dean took over. ‘Now, there will be five minutes of silent prayer, please sit down,’ he said, while gesturing for the choir to leave. While the choir tip toed to the exit, Sherlock’s phone rang. The caller ID said Lestrade.

‘And please turn off your mobile phones,’ the Dean said, completely in character, ‘this must be obvious by now.’

Sherlock took a picture of the fifth candle and sent it to Lestrade. Then the four of them also quietly made their way to the exit.

 

The square was empty and many cars had left. Two strange cars were parked on the side of the road, as far away from the church as possible. A man came towards them. He wore jeans, but Sherlock instantly recognised him as a policeman. Mary nodded and went to get their car. The Dean did the same with his.

‘The bomb is in the centre candle of the Advent Crown,’ Sherlock said to the policeman. The policeman took his radio and told his colleagues. He then turned to Sherlock, John and the Dean. ‘You must all go.’

The organist and two sound technicians left the church and confirmed that they were the last ones to leave. Something that looked like a remotely controlled model tank went into the cathedral. Sherlock knew that it was a bomb disposal tool.

Mary and the Dean drove up to them. The Dean took the organist and the technicians and drove into the direction the policeman pointed him. John got in the car but Sherlock hesitated and looked back onto the square. Something wasn’t right.

‘On the ground!’ he screamed. They ducked behind the car. A gunshot sounded. Then there was silence.

Sherlock looked under the car onto the square.

A figure walked to the middle. It was Walker. He was wearing a black suit.

‘It’s you!’ he screamed at the car. ‘How dare you.’

Sherlock suppressed the impulse to get up and answer, helped by the fact that John was holding him down by his sleeve.

‘Any idea who I am?!’ he screamed at them.

The policeman’s radio cracked. ‘It’s defused,’ said the voice.

Another gunshot.  Sherlock saw that Walker was aiming in the air. Looking the other way, he saw the policemen in the two civilian cars. They were armed and already aiming at Walker.

‘How dare you take away my revenge?’ Walker screamed. ‘After all I’ve done for the community. The ungrateful pigs.’

‘Wasn’t it his idea to play this game?’ John whispered to Sherlock. Sherlock grinned.

‘I am the authority here. That monster of a woman just left me as if I were nothing. She doesn’t know what she’s dealing with. She and her friends were just gossiping about me. They even got Vicky to doubt me. The stupid bitch said she would leave me. Well, she got what she deserved.’ Walker looked at the place where he imagined Sherlock to be. ‘And so will you,’ he said and aimed.

Five gunshots, almost at the same time.

Sherlock didn’t feel pain. He looked at John, checking, John looked fine as well.

More gunshots.

The two policemen were firing out of their windows.

He looked at Walker, he fired back, but then he fell over. Without even seeing it, Sherlock knew what had happened. Walker had been hit in the head.

 

The following morning, Sherlock woke up late. Golden light was shining through the window of his hotel room into his face. He listened but no sound emerged from John and Mary’s room. He closed his eyes again and was back on the bridge in his mind palace. He cleared all the hills of objects and people. Now there was just grass, blown around by a cold wind. The train, the tracks and the nameless characters were still there.

He looked from the character on the bridge to the ones on the tracks, to the train, back to the bridge, eventually just the hills. The only thing he heard was the wind. Two situations, identical as far as costs and benefits were concerned, but with inverse solutions.

‘Oh, Sherlock, why do you never pay attention when I talk about forensic pathology?’ Molly was standing on his right side now, looking amused. ‘Or if John talks about it for that matter, just a few weeks ago.’

John had appeared next to her. ‘Disrupting emotional processing severely impairs decision making,’ he said.

‘Did you not remember what he was talking about?’ she asked. ‘There are people with brain injuries that somehow make them incapable of emotional processing.’ She looked him in the eyes. ‘They literally can’t feel emotions, except for the most basic ones, while their ability to reason stays fully intact.’

‘And that impairs their decision making?’

‘To a disastrous extent. Those people end up needing constant care. You can give them a problem and they can weigh all pros and cons but then they’re unable to decide which solution would be the correct one.’

‘This is all very charming,’ said Mycroft, who now stood on his left side, ‘but we can weigh pros and cons and we can decide that we want more of the former and fewer of the latter. The problem is still a paradox.’

‘Don’t you see?’ Molly asked. ‘It’s the emotional processing that decides whether a thing is good or bad, not the logical processing. This is the tool we use for our decisions. It’s older than logic and not strictly logical in itself, therefore you cannot reason yourself out of this problem. The paradox is merely a feature of our deepest instincts about right and wrong. It’s what connects us to all humans.’

‘It’s a tell.’ John said. ‘Struggling with this decision means that we actually have the capability to make it in the first place.’

Sherlock stared at the character on the bridge, then over the railing to the train. ‘Imperfection is the only possibility.’ He smirked. ‘Tom would hate that.’

‘Do you know why?’ Mary asked.

‘Because he needs to be perfect. For some reason, being imperfect is too painful.’

‘Then what does he do?’ Mary asked.

‘He shuts himself down. He shies away from that pain and creates a grandiose fantasy. Therefore, paradoxically, self-criticism causes the fantasy of grandiosity.’

Sherlock gave Mycroft a look. Mycroft shook his head. ‘Without self-criticism we’d be out of control completely.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ John asked.

‘You’re saying there’s another way?’

‘Do you understand?’ Molly asked. ‘He shuts down his own emotional processing and thus the most important part of being human itself. He turns himself into a monster.’

‘It’s not through our strengths that we connect to people.’ Mrs Hudson smiled. ‘Everyone suffers in some way, it’s not what isolates us, it’s what connects us.’

Sherlock looked at Mycroft who just gave him a confused look.

John pointed at Mycroft. ‘He’s not going anywhere. You won’t be out of control.’

‘He wants to be admired so desperately.’ Mrs Hudson said. ‘And what is this other than our deep desire to connect? Isn’t it odd that he craves connection more than anything else, while in the process destroying the very part of himself that makes that possible?’

 

It was late in the afternoon when they finally reached London again. The weather had turned for the worse.

‘What are you doing for Christmas anyway?’ John asked when they pulled over at Sherlock’s door.

‘Where did you get the idea that I cared about Christmas?’

‘Sherlock, you’re not going to celebrate Christmas alone.’

‘I’ll be with Mrs Hudson, she’s not going anywhere either.’

‘Would you like to have dinner together?’ Mary asked from the driver’s seat. ‘We’re not doing much either.’ She looked at John. ‘We don’t even have groceries because we were obsessing about the church.’

‘I thought you’d take care of that,’ John said.

Mary just shrugged. ‘I was going to, but then we decided to go to the Cotswolds instead.’ She smiled at Sherlock. ‘Would you like to have takeaway with us?’

‘But then Mrs Hudson would be alone,’ John said. He looked at Sherlock, seemingly expecting something.

For a moment, Sherlock just stared; then he worked it out. ‘Why don’t you three come to my place and we have Chinese or something? Then we’ll be with five people.’

 

Mary went to pick up the baby and Sherlock and John went inside. Mrs Hudson was happy to have them over, even if that meant that this year’s Christmas dinner would be takeaway. She decided that with a few candles and decorations, even Chinese food could be festive enough.

John went upstairs but Sherlock lingered. ‘Yesterday, I think you may have had a point.’

‘I know, I had, dear.’

Sherlock looked at the stairs where John had just disappeared. ‘I didn’t really expect them… I mean, John and I had a bit of a fight earlier.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, Sherlock, don’t you remember? No one receives a coal in their stocking.’

She smiled and he smiled back, feeling slightly confused.

 

When he got into his apartment, John had boiled water, like he’d done so many times before. Sherlock took his violin and started tuning. He heard how John came to stand next to him and turned around.

John looked at Sherlock as if he wanted to say something. Sherlock looked at him expectantly.

John cleared his throat. ‘Quite a case, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, quite.’ Sherlock stared out of the window. It was dark and drizzly.

‘Not really how I envisioned Santa Claus as a kid.’

They both chuckled.

‘John, I...’ he stopped as he realised that he didn’t have a clue how to end that sentence.

‘Sometimes I make decisions that affect other people’s lives. Sometimes it’s a matter of life and death.’

John nodded quickly. ‘I’m a doctor; I know like no one else that you can’t save everyone and that you have to make choices sometimes.’

Sherlock looked outside. Three women in raincoats were walking briskly on the pavement, hurrying to get out of the rain.

‘I just hate the fact that it’s so difficult.’

Sherlock saw in the reflection that John smiled.

‘Welcome to the human race.’

He suddenly felt uncomfortable. ‘Right, eh, I just wanted you to know that.’

He turned around to see if there was anything he could do in the kitchen and was quite startled when he felt Johns hand slapping his shoulder.


End file.
